Katherine @ fiberandsustenance

New Month, New Things

I can hardly believe it’s the second day of May (and neither can the weather, it seems). It’s been gray and dreary here the past week, so I decided I’d try a new spring recipe to remind myself that sunshine and good produce are on the way!

I love The Guardian’s recipes, and they have recently been featuring spring dishes. I decided to give their Braised Rabbit with Radishes and Spring Onions a try (that post has so many other tasty recipes, too). We went to the Farmers’ Market Saturday morning, but the farm we get meat from didn’t have rabbit this week, so I got chicken instead.

2016-05-01 18.37.46.jpg — The ingredients, ready to go!

The recipe’s a pretty simple one, with very few ingredients. I think it’s definitely worth seeking out some high quality chicken for it — ours was from the amazing Liberty Delight Farms. We love all their meats, and their chicken is super flavorful, which really came through in this dish.

2016-05-01 19.09.49.jpg — Going into the oven to braise.

I followed the recipe pretty much as written. I didn’t get the chicken brining until the morning of making it. The leg quarters were huge, so I had to brown them in batches in the pot. I had a bit of a fight with a few of them, trying to move them too early while they were browning and destroying the skin a bit. By the last one (on the left side of the pan), I sort of got the hang of it. I was really frustrated that I tore the skin on so many, but it still turned out delicious — a good reminder that things don’t have to turn out perfectly to be yummy!

2016-05-01 20.11.15.jpg — The finished product!

This recipe had a few new tricks for me. The first was pickling mustard seeds using the juice from a jar of dill pickles! Like the brining, I forgot to do this the night before, so started them the morning of. They were tasty — probably not essential to the finished recipe, but I felt very pro sprinkling them on my finished chicken. The recipe also called for steamed radishes and green onions — I wasn’t sure about steamed radishes, but they were super tasty. I also boiled up some red and white new potatoes from the market, with a bit of parsley and butter and made a springy salad with bibb lettuce and arugula, some pickled red onions and pistachios. It was a big Sunday meal, and everything but the pantry items and the bibb lettuce came from the Farmer’s Market — I love those kinds of meals!

There were also some fun new things of the sheep and wool variety this weekend:

Charm City Craft Mafia‘s Buzz Market was this weekend, and there were so many awesome makers with gorgeous things. I tried to restrain myself since Maryland Sheep and Wool is this coming weekend, but I splurged on a couple of prints from Tiny Dog Press and Wooden Pencil Co., a bandanna from Radical Textiles, and this amazing sheep pillow from Fuzzy Mug! I love this sheepy gal, and she goes perfectly with my other gorgeous sheepy pillow that Mr. N got me in the Midlands a few years ago! Typing that all out, I’m realizing what a poor job I did of restraining myself … but it could have been worse (I was particularly tempted by Julia‘s gorgeous pottery and candles from Handmade Habitat and Knits, Soy and Metal). It was a fabulous craft fair.

Quite the yarn cake …

Swatch!

I reached the point in my May Cardigan where it required blocking (before seaming and knitting a small amount of ribbing on each sleeve), so I wound up a GIANT skein of BFL sport and did a gauge swatch for my next project, Gudrun Johnson’s new Islay Cardigan. I’m really excited about this project. Gudrun’s hosting a KAL on Ravelry starting at the end of this week, and my mom and I are both joining. I love KALs to keep me motivated on projects. The yarn is a gorgeous — it’s a Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn that is, unfortunately, discontinued at the moment because of supply issues, in the colorwary Deep Unrelenting Gray. I love the subtle variations in the color. It also meets two of my knitting goals for 2016: doing more knitting from stash (I bought this yarn a few years ago for a Audrey in Unst, which I still want to make) and knitting with sturdier wool that’s less likely to pill — the BFL is still soft enough to wear next to the skin, but I’m hoping it will wear better than some sweaters I’ve knit out of softer wool (see, for example, the very visible pilling on my favorite pink sweater in the above picture).

Hope your weekend was full of some fun new things — happy Monday!

WIP Wednesday: May Cardigan

I love traveling, and luckily, get to do a lot of it for work. There are many things I enjoy when traveling (including, of course, eating!), but few things quite as much as scouting out local yarn shops.

Just over a year ago, I spent a month in Massachusetts for research. While there, we took a brief trip to Portland, Maine, a place I’d never been before. Even in frigid March, it was a lovely place, and we had an amazing time wandering around, eating great food and trying fun cocktails, and exploring a bit of the Maine coast. Despite the short visit, we stopped in at LYS Knit Wit. Sharing a hometown with Quince and Co., it’s one of the yarn line’s original flagship stores and had almost every yarn the company makes. I was immediately drawn to two yarns: gorgeous Tern in Columbine, which became an Everly Shawl shortly thereafter, and, unusually for me, Quince and Co’s Piper, a 50-50 merino/mohair blend, in Guadalupe. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do with it, but picked up three skeins, enough to make a shawl like Love and Lemons (a shawl I’d still like to make).

Fast forward to this spring and Quince’s release of a new Piper collection. I immediately fell in love with the May cardigan — which required three skeins of Piper! I cast on with the goal of finishing the sweater in time for this year’s Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.

With about a week and a half to go until the festival, I think I have a reasonable chance of reaching my goal. I’ve really enjoyed knitting this sweater. The construction’s very interesting (I’ll admit I’m still not 100% sure on how the whole thing comes together) but you start at the bottom of the sweater, work the back and fronts together, then divide the fronts and keep going — eventually the fronts are joined together, and seamed to the back, making the lovely shawl collar. The cartridge stitch is easy to do, so it’s great TV knitting, and I love the texture of the stitch. I’m not usually a big fan of fuzzy yarns, but the blend of merino and mohair has a really pleasing halo — I think it will be the perfect spring/summer cardigan.

I’ve followed the pattern pretty much to the letter — this is my second Bristol Ivy sweater, and I find her patterns clear and clever! My only deviation from the pattern as written was to knit the two fronts at the same time — it’s a method I almost always use for socks and mitts. For this pattern, it appealed to me for two reasons. The fronts are quite long, and I worried I’d lose steam after completing the first one. Also, the cartridge stitch is super stretchy, and a bit hard to measure as a result, so this ensures my front will be exactly the same length.

I spent a little time on the front porch knitting, trying a new IPA with some yummy French cheese and my new favorite crackers. I’m almost done with the fronts — full steam ahead on the final details, and fingers crossed I’ll be wearing this one a week from Sunday at the festival. Here’s to Wednesday — the week’s half done!

Welcome to fiber and sustenance!

Spring’s finally sprung here in the mid-Atlantic. It was a long time coming, but that was fine by me since it meant I could wear wool longer than usual! With the new beginnings of spring, I decided it was finally time to start a blog, something I’ve long wanted to do, to document and share my love of knitting and all things fiber and record some of my favorite recipes (sustenance — ha, see what I did there!)

So let’s dive in, shall we? Since it was one of the first properly nice weekends here, I spent Sunday afternoon at a lovely nearby tulip garden. We have a picnic there every year, and the flowers this year didn’t disappoint.

I spent most of the afternoon knitting and people/dog watching — on a sunny Sunday, the tulip garden provided plenty of material!

I’ve been hard at work on Qunice’s May cardigan, which I’ll write a fuller post about on Wednesday. To sign off, I’ll leave one final photo of these happiest of yellow tulips — happy Monday!